ich, gentlemen, I believe will be
fatal. It has not yet been announced. We may still withdraw with honor."

He looked around the table with anxious, haunted eyes, opened wide
so that the pupils appeared small and staring in their setting of
blood-shot white. The Chancellor glanced around, also.

"It is not always easy to let the people of a country know what is good
for them and for it. To retreat now is to show our weakness, to make an
enemy again of King Karl, and to gain us nothing, not even safety. As
well abdicate, and turn the country over to the Terrorists! And, in this
crisis, let me remind you of something you persistently forget. Whatever
the views of the solid citizens may be as to this marriage,--and once it
is effected, they will accept it without doubt,--the Crown Prince is now
and will remain the idol of the country. It is on his popularity we
must depend. We must capitalize it. Mobs are sentimental. Whatever the
Terrorists may think, this I know: that when the bell announces His
Majesty's death, when Ferdinand William Otto steps out on the balcony,
a small and lonely child, they will rally to him. That figure, on the
balcony, will be more potent than a thousand demagogues, haranguing in
the public streets."

The Council broke up in confusion. Nothing had been done, or would be
done. Mettlich of the Iron Hand had held them, would continue to hold
them. The King, meanwhile, lay dying, Doctor Wiederman in constant
attendance, other physicians coming and going. His apartments were
silent. Rugs covered the corridors, that no footfall disturb his quiet
hours. The nursing Sisters attended him, one by his bedside, one always
on her knees at the Prie-dieu in the small room beyond. He wanted
little--now and then a sip of water, the cooled juice of fruit.

Injections of stimulants, given by Doctor Wiederman himself, had scarred
his old arms with purplish marks, and were absorbed more and more slowly
as the hours went on.

He rarely slept, but lay inert and not unhappy. Now and then one of his
gentlemen, given permission, tiptoed into the room, and stood looking
down at his royal master. Annunciata came, and was at last stricken by
conscience to a prayer at his bedside. On one of her last visits that
was. She got up to find his eyes fixed on her.

"Father," she began.

He made no motion.

"Father, can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"I--I have been a bad daughter to you. I am sorry. It is late now to
tell you, b